Blog
It's going to be a busy summer around here. Starting with three new lab members who joined us in June! Sheridan and Vivian are undergraduates at Wash U helping out on several projects over the summer, and Margaret is an AuD student who will be working on a research project over the next year. Welcome!
Sheridan Frank
Vivian Tao
Margaret Koeritzer
Chris Westbury
We were fortunate to have Chris Westbury (personal website / lab website) from the University of Alberta visit Washington University this week. Chris and I are co-authors on a paper but haven't had the chance to meet until now. Chris has done elegant and interesting work on lexical semantics, most recently on looking at the role of emotional attributes in the context of corpus analyses (i.e. semantic associations derived from co-occurrance measures like LSA). It was great to have Chris here, and I'm looking forward to his next visit!
I'm finishing up a very nice visit to the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University, where I gave a talk and visited with a number of faculty. Many thanks to David Kemmerer for setting this up, and for all of the faculty and students who took time to speak with me today. Lots of interesting work going on here! I look forward to a return visit someday.
Congratulations to Caitlin Ward, who successfully defended her senior honors project this afternoon. Caitlin is majoring in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology at Wash U and was the first student to join my lab. In her honors project, she conducted an experiment to see whether listening to acoustically-challenging stories has any impact on our ability to remember these stories later. Caitlin updated and standardized a large set of Aesop's Fables, designed her experiment, and collected data from a group of undergraduates. The work is ongoing, and I look forward to sharing results sometime in the coming months. Great job Caitlin!
UPDATE: The position is filled.
We are looking for a full-time research assistant to start this summer. The position involves collecting and analyzing behavioral and neuroimaging data. Previous experience doing this is not necessary; it is more important that you are conscientious, well-organized, self-motivated, and able to work independently. And also have fun. We have a great team and are looking forward to expanding!
Please see the full description below.
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ASSISTANT POSITION
A full-time cognitive neuroscience research assistant position is available in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Peelle in the Department of Otolaryngology at Washington University in St. Louis. The lab uses human brain imaging to study how listeners understand speech, and the ways this changes with normal aging and hearing impairment. Position responsibilities will include the collection and analysis of both behavioral and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, and working closely with Dr. Peelle to implement experiments and apply for research funding. The position comes with many opportunities for growth and training and will provide a strong foundation for individuals interested in continuing their education in graduate or medical school.
Washington University is one of the nation’s leading institutions in both neuroscience and medical research, with three research-dedicated MRI scanners and a vibrant cognitive neuroscience community across the departments of Psychology, Radiology, Neurology, Biomedical Engineering, and Otolaryngology. The Department of Otolaryngology has over 100 years of history of leadership in the treatment of disorders of the ear, nose and throat in both adults and children, including pursuing the relationship between hearing and brain function.
Preferred qualifications: Equivalent of Bachelor’s degree in neuroscience, psychology, biology, biomedical engineering, computer science, or related field. The candidate must be detail oriented, able to work independently, and have strong organizational and interpersonal skills. Experience in any of the following is preferred: psychological testing, statistical analysis, graphic design, E-Prime, Linux/Unix, MATLAB, R, or computer programming.
The anticipated starting date for this job is June 1, 2014. Preference will be given to candidates who can commit to two years in the position.
Washington University in St. Louis is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer and encourages applications from women, ethnic minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities.
I've recently returned from a fantastic workshop in Leipzig, Germany: Signal and Noise along the Auditory Pathway (SNAP). SNAP2013 was held at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, organized by Jonas Obleser (with much help from his lab and many others).
Every talk was excellent and I won't go through them one by one; it's worth looking at the program for a list of speakers. The goal was to bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers working on how the brain processes auditory signals, drawing from computational modeling, animal work, psychophysics, and cognitive psychology. A common theme that emerged was the importance of prediction in sensory processing, with a number of complementary views on how the brain accomplishes this.
There are already talks about a repeat conference in 2-3 years, perhaps in North America. I'm hopeful we'll have another chance for such a great meeting!
Oh, and for those of you who might not have caught the reference (you would be forgiven), Snap! is also a Europop group from the early 1990s, and there was a friendly competition to see who could work in the best reference to Snap! in his or her SNAP talk.
Snap music video for "Rhythm is a dancer"
